For the past week I worked on a laser cut box that could hold itself together without any adhesives. This week was very interesting for me as I have never done laser cutting before.
Preparation and Testing
The first step of the process was of course preparing my box in Illustrator to make it ready to be cut. To make the box design I used MakerCase. I wanted my box to be 5 x 5 inches and chose 0.625 inches for finger size for a .2 inch material thickness. To decide on what kerf value to use, I had to do some testing. Since I could not find the file that was mentioned on Homework Assignment document I just created a 2 x 2 inch square on illustrator and added one of the designs I wanted to put on my final box to also test values for cutting and engraving. Me and Lidvin then ran the tests.
I calculated the kerf to be 0.007 as the box that we cut was 1.986 x 1.986 inches. I then inputted that into MakerCase and finally downloaded the box and opened it in Illustrator. It was now time to finish my box design. This is what I ended up going with:
This is a little hard to see because I transferred a screenshot from the OEDK computer
Laser cutting
From the tests me and Lidvin conducted previously, the settings we decided to use for our boxes were:
Vector Cut: 15 Speed, 100 Power, 10 Frequency Engraving: 10 Speed, 10 Power, 600 Resolution
Now it was finally time to cut! Since we had run so many tests beforehand, the cutting went well … for the most part. Once the laser cutter finished cutting I took out the material and started removing the result. The first few panels of the box came out nicely but one of them did not. I turned the wood around and noticed that it was not fully cut although it was definitely close. I decided to just try to snap it out harder and it worked, there was some chipping though. Once all my pieces were out I made the realization that on two of them there were empty fingers on one of their edges.
I have no clue what happened but I think that there may have been a mistake made in illustrator. I was honestly not too bothered by this and it ended working when I assembled it. I also think it makes my box a little unique although that may not be good.
Once I started assembling I realized that the fit was very tight. It took a lot of strength and willpower for me to fully assemble the box. This is why I was not very happy with myself when I realized that I had placed one of my panels upside down and I could not do anything about it. Due to the shape of the design on the panel it actually is not that noticeable, it does still pain me though.
Time for the final reveal!
Although I am happy with the result, there are various improvements that could be made for next time. Since the burn marks on the wood are noticeable in my final result I would definitely want to use some sort of method to mitigate that, probably the painter’s tape method. I would also like to adjust the kerf on the design a little bit since again, the fit was very tight. I also need to pay more attention to the way I am connecting the panels so that none of my designs end up upside down next time. I still do not know how some of the fingers ended up empty but I would definitely want to make the changes necessary for that to not happen anymore.
Cost Analysis
- 1/4″ 13″ by 13″ Birch Plywood at Home Depot: $4.98
- Labor Costs at $13/hr for 3 hours: $39
- Total: $43.98
